It surprised me when my voice caught in my throat. Just one second earlier my planned response seemed important; now I was silent, watching her cheerfully peel an orange. She was beaming with pride. In any other context her sunny demeanor would delight me.
“I just told her I thought she would always regret it,” she continued as she popped an orange slice in her mouth.
I wondered if that was true. It didn't seem true for the women I knew, but the women I knew didn't exactly wear their hearts on their sleeves.
And they probably didn't yet see me as a woman, anyway.
It was a beautiful spring day, the kind I needed after a long, gray winter, and I wasn't sure what that meant for me. I was certain I deserved a dark and dreary day but the earth overruled me.
If I was going to meditate on regret I was going to do it in the bright light of day.
I was seventeen, just weeks away from my 18th birthday. I needed that birthday to come quick because I hadn't had a period in over six weeks. My sex partner (I can't legitimately call him a boyfriend because he wasn't) was as anxiety ridden as I was. We didn't even have a real discussion about it. I told him I was late and we'd have to save funds to take care of it, and he said OK.
Being seventeen and raised in a conservative environment, I had until then been “pro-life.” But once it happened to me, I realized abortion wasn't evil. It was just practical.
My story is kind of anticlimactic. I had started a new job and during orientation I passed out. The next day, less than a week after my 18th birthday, I started bleeding and it was NOT a normal period. It was a miscarriage but I've never been happier to be in so much pain and bleed so much.
I just wanted to go home and sleep, but before I did that I stopped by my partner's house. I guess I looked pretty bad because as soon as I walked in the house he rushed over to me and said I should probably sit down. Instead, I wrapped my arms around him and whispered “I'm bleeding.”
We both started sobbing happy tears. He helped me down to his room and put me to bed, holding me tight. I stayed there in his bed for a couple days and he couldn't have been more helpful. He cleaned me, helped me walk, fed me, held me.
And this experience changed my life. I became fiercely pro-choice, and I also realized it was probably time for me to come out as a lesbian. WHY I made that particular decision at that time is a whole other story; maybe before I leave this earth I'll be able to tell that.
But it was only in the last few years that I told my mom about this; about how I felt certain she knew, as she ate that orange, that I was pregnant at the time and as far as I was concerned I had only one choice.
She really didn't know, and apologized for making me feel pressure. “I am against abortion,” she said. “But that's a personal choice I made for myself. I've never thought I should make that choice for other women. But I guess the way I've always talked about it made it seem that way.”
“Well, just so you know, to this day if I somehow got pregnant, I'd abort the shit out of it with no regrets.”
My mom laughed uncomfortably. “I can't believe I raised you this way.”
I know a lot of women told their stories when the leaked Alito draft made the news. I read many, if not most of them, but I was critically ill at the time and barely able to send texts more complicated than “OK” or “LYT.” And with the Dobbs ruling, I didn't know whether to feel grateful that I was heading out of this world, or angry that I can't stay and fight.
I still don't know.
I know that I don't have the wherewithal to do anything more than vote this year and that drives me crazy. But I thought maybe the tsunami of very important and relevant abortion stories needed to start up again before the midterms. Just as a reminder that this IS a critical issue. It's an economic issue. It's a health issue, it's an issue of equality.
And it's an issue that we've been trained to tiptoe around and treat with the utmost delicacy, but for millions of women it's not that delicate. It's not taboo. It's simply a choice that should be available. Whether that is a difficult decision or not depends a lot on the person, and as I listened to my mom speak of regret all those years ago, I STILL can't think of one woman for whom it was a regret or difficult.
We need to be able to say that out loud. And God damnit we have to fight like hell to protect it.
I can't fight anymore. But please, please, please, fight like hell for me and on my behalf. PLEASE. We need this.